June 2023 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

June 22, 2023

Does America Care About Its Reputation? America’s Leadership in Teenage Genital Mutilation

May be an image of 3 people and text — Transgenders going topless at the White House recently

Iran’s ruling class of fanatical mullahs regularly bashes the United States as the Great Satan. The question is, are we at this juncture trying to prove the rabid imams right?

American embassies display the LGBTQ+ flag throughout the world, including societies who maintain millenniums-old proscriptions on homosexual and other unconventional sex-related behavior. Such norms are deeply, culturally embedded and thus resistant to change by embassy flag waving or ambassadorial pronouncements. U.S. government interference in domestic affairs will probably be met with a native-born counter revolution. An Ibo tribesman walking the streets of Lagos might not give much thought to the rainbow flag on the U.S. embassy building, but once informed, chances are, he’ll meet the flag’s meaning with disfavor, and, by so doing, begin the long mental process of seeing America as the enemy of his way of life.

LBGTQ rainbow flag flying at US embassy to the Vatican for Pride Month — and backlash is swift ... — The pride flag on the US embassy to the Vatican, of all places

The view of the United States in these traditional societies may emerge as one resembling Babylon in much traditional Christian eschatology. Babylon symbolizes evil. God’s wrath awaits it in the last days. Similar apocalyptic scenarios exist in Islam. Certainly, discrimination, execution, and torture of homosexuality is an affront to decency, but don’t expect societies with little in common with San Francisco to be so gung-ho in embracing our sexual revolution.

Are we alienating more than the vast majority of the world’s population who live in traditional societies? On many fronts such as pushing pernicious pedagogy, glamorizing our hedonistic cultural revolution in our movies, the propagation of our faddish neo-Marxist “equities” nonsense (the woke stuff), greenie extremism, etc., America is at the tip of the spear. And, now, we have staked out the most extreme position on transgenderism and “gender affirming care” (GAC), far beyond where our European colleagues in western civilization are willing to go.

Consider: gender dysphoria is the only branch of health care in which a self-diagnosis is the basis of treatment. More commonly, your doctor’s most requested input from you is, “It hurts there.” Then, he would apply his training, knowledge, and experience. In many places today, anyone, a kid or adult, can come into a health care facility and express disenchantment with their gender and from there it could easily be a quick path to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and reassignment surgery – the so-called “gender-affirming care” (GAC). It’s the kind of logic-jumping that one associates with an ideologue, for that is what transgenderism is. How do you turn the self-diagnosis of “I feel” into objective, physical, empirically-validated truth? It’s nonsense. It’s simply the possession of a strongly-held belief and it’s off to radical action. Caution, alternatives, and disagreement cannot be tolerated, the true signs of an ideology at work.

As one would expect, California has its fingerprints all over America’s newfound sexual extremism. As is true with all extremists, there’s no room for other views, which leads the radicals to try to control the state in order to criminalize disagreement. “Gender-Affirming Care” (GAC) is all the rage for America’s progressive ruling class. The treatment formula is simple: GAC = drugs and surgery, with a little psychological push known as “counseling” for good measure. Those who disagree may even lose their kids. California is busy passing laws to lay the long arm of the law on parents who dissent from the California legislature’s party line.

More about California in a moment but one thing must be made clear: unsurprisingly, many of its most enthusiastic proponents come from people who’ve “transitioned” or parents who encouraged their own children to embark on this irreversible course. The transgender Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine is the current US Assistant Secretary of Health, and vocal advocate of doing to kids what he/she did to himself/herself. To keep justifying his decisions to himself, and seeking solace in making it easier for others to follow the same path, he engages in outright lies when he says, “. . . there is no argument among medical professionals about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.” Anything goes for an ideologue. The lie is obvious, as you’ll see in a bit.

Rachel Levine on Facing Transphobia: “I Am Really Able to Channel That Emotion Into My Work” | them. — US Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine

Such arrogant and condescending overconfidence is displayed by California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson. So strongly does she seek reaffirmation for her encouragement of gender transition for her own child that she wrote AB 957. Her choice, her opinion of “gender affirming care”, is written into the bill, and parents who favor a different approach could lose custody of their children in divorce proceedings. If it’s such a good idea for custody battles in cases of divorce, there’s no obstacle to its application to all families. Previously, the California Department of Social Services issued a mandate for fealty to “gender-affirming care” (drugs and surgery) for foster-parent applicants. Anything goes for an ideologue like Wilson and California regulators. These zealots reside in a state whose governing class thinks – or, more honestly, wishes – that the issue is settled when most clearly it is not.

Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson Adjourns in Memory of Actress Nichelle Nichols - YouTube — California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson

Wilson’s legislative monstrosity is the latest in a line of California-sponsored extremism on transgender experimentation, with our kids as guinea pigs, sometimes over the protests of the kids’ parents. Residing in another state is no protection. If your child in Florida is bombarded with hints of gender dysphoria on TikTok and is anxious about his or her parents’ reaction, that anxiety can find a release without parental consent or knowledge in an underground railroad to California under SB 107 (2022, effective Jan.1, 2023). Your kid arrives in California, God knows how, the state takes your kid into “protective custody”, the child can undergo “transition”, and the Golden State’s authorities are prohibited from notifying the parents if the offending state restricts the medicinal and surgical mutilation of adolescents.

In an act of life imitating art, California has turned itself into H.G. Wells’ “Island of Dr. Moreau”, a place where a Dr. Moreau creates hybrid animal/humans by vivisection. California has turned itself into an island where hybrid boy/girls with an irreversible chromosomal composition in almost every cell of their body will now be subjected to puberty blockers, constant and life-long infusions of cross-sex hormones, and extensive reconstructive plastic surgeries to create XY girls or XX boys. Call it human gender vivisection.

The Island of Dr. Moreau: Evil in Adaptation #TBT — A scene from 1977 film adaptation of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”

Of course, the zealots need a crisis to stampede an unknowing public into accepting these drastic measures. An alleged epidemic of teen suicide fits the bill. There simply is no credible evidence that anything pushed by Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine or Lori Wilson – their “gender-affirming care”- has any positive effect on the suicidal tendencies of self-proclaimed gender dysphoric teens. Historically, the crisis-of-the-moment tactic is a favorite of radicals wishing to rationalize their extremism. But if you strip away the rhetoric, stare at the issue with strict rationality, it’s horrific.

A warning label should be affixed to California: “Warning: this state is dangerous to your mental and physical health.” One California State Senator, Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita, put it succinctly on June 13, 2023, in referring to Wilson’s bill, “If you love your children, you need to flee California.” Los Angeles resident and journalist Abigail Shrier, who is facing social persecution for not adhering to the party line, advises parents with children in schools afflicted with a transgender social contagion, “The moment you hear that [your child’s friends are transitioning or using “non-binary” language to describe themselves], get your kids out of that school!” To effectively do that, you may have to go state-shopping.

SCVNews.com | Wilk Says New State Budget Invests in Newsom’s ‘Short-Term Political Future’ | 07 ... — California State Senator Scott Wilk (R, Santa Clarita)

California has become a threat to the nation and world because what you see passing through the state legislature and across the governor’s desk is also the official outlook of the state’s fellow travelers running the show in the federal government. It’s going national. The loyal opposition is cornered in a narrow majority in one half of Congress. The executive branch and its ruling donkey party ape the donkey party’s super-majorities in the California legislature. And what they are doing is swimming upstream as our cultural amigos in Europe are having second thoughts about the transgender zealotry.

Clearly, for many in the European continent’s health care establishments, this rush to malform a child’s body has become deeply troubling. While formerly in the forefront of “transition” therapies in “gender-affirming care”, lately they have decided to pull back. In the UK, the brakes were put on it by a lawsuit. 23-year-old Keira Bell sued the National Health Service (NHS) and its Tavistock Centre gender identity clinic for improper care and treatment of her gender dysphoria beginning at age 16. Other young victims are waiting in line to take their crack at the country’s medical malpractice.

Cambiare sesso a 16 anni e pentirsene: la storia di Keira Bell che ha deciso di denunciare la ... — Keira Bell, as a boy after transition (r) and now after detransition

An independent investigation by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass chronicled practices at the clinic like the hurried and inordinate use of puberty blockers – by the way, originally used for chemical castration – which were prescribed for Bell after only three visits. In a report, the BBC’s Alison Holt wrote of Tavistock, “Former staff at the clinic have raised concerns that teenagers who want to transition to a different gender are being given puberty blockers without adequate assessment or psychological work.” It’s been a persistent complaint going back to at least 2009. A year of puberty blockers for Bell was followed by three more years of male hormones and a double mastectomy (breast removal). Indeed, “without adequate assessment” appears to be the nature of “gender-affirming care” at Tavistock and elsewhere, and the core complaint of the suing victims. Bell won. In the end, after the Cass report, the July 2022 obituary for the Tavistock Centre was announced by the UK’s National Health Service.

NHS gender clinic, the Tavistock Centre, could face legal action over alleged 'failings in care ... — The Travitock Centre in London

Scandinavia, long a pioneer in transgender treatments, is having serious second thoughts and is making a mockery of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine’s boast of one mind among “experts” in lockstep support of drug and cutting-induced changes to a child’s body. The Dutch let loose the tiger of “gender-affirming care” (GAC) for children in the 1990’s, but now are saying “Whooooaaaaa”! They are in the process of revising their earlier enthusiasm for what later came to be called “The Dutch Protocol”. As Dutch researchers Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman wrote in their report on “The Dutch Protocol” about the use of puberty blockers, the first medical intervention in “transition”,

“More and more is becoming known about the long-term side effects of puberty blockers. They interfere with physical sexual development, hinder the development of the bones, can cause anorgasmia and infertility and interfere with the ability to make rational decisions.”

The Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians haven’t ignored the mounting evidence by 2022. A Finnish review of “gender-affirming care” recommended restrictions and a preference for talking therapy. Sweden’s medical authorities warn that the risks of GAC “currently outweigh the benefits.” Norway’s health care regulators expressed similar caution. French medical authorities chimed in with much the same worries. As it turns out, America stands out as the “wild west” in nearly unrestrained teenage genital mutilation in service of a radical ideology.

The appearance of a rising number of detransitioners and a growing recognition of a social contagion in gender dysphoria is making the contentions of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine preposterous. Many young people regretting the hash that people like Levine have made of their lives will end up ranking “gender-affirming care” right up there with the race theories of Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial Policy. Studies of detransitioners are all over the map but one U.S. study found that nearly 30% of transitioners stopped and reversed their medical interventions within 4 years, this in spite of the great social pressure to go through with it. For the push for transition, we don’t need droplets to spread a virus since the cell phone will do quite nicely.

undefined — Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial Policy

How Norman Spack transformed the way we treat transgender children - Lifestyle Features — Norman Spack of Boston’s Children’s Hospital and an early enthusiast of “gender-affirming care”

The social pressure comes in the form of a social contagion. Unlike COVID-19 whose vulnerable are older adults, the vulnerable are the impressionable, the young who are digitally getting the gender dysphoria virus. All of a sudden, it’s tween and teen girls, instead of boys, who are overpowering the stats according to Lisa Littman, formerly of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and currently Director of The Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research. How did this happen? The culprit rides in that rectangular device planted in your teen’s pocket. Social media on that screen plays to the comorbidities of gender dysphoria such as teen girls’ insecurities, mental conditions like autism, an exaggerated sense of envy, etc. Gender-affirming care’s reliance on teen self-diagnosis skips over the real problems. The mask is mistaken for the real face and off we go into the mutilation of children.

Any adult worth his or her salt, particularly those who raised kids, would know that kids aren’t very good at medical analysis. But the official policy of the U.S. is to not know any better than a teen as we push the rest of the world to join us in treating children as lab rats. Worse: practice gender vivisection to create hybrid boys and girls out of our offspring. Imagine America as the avatar of teenage genital mutilation. I’m sorry but that’s not a good look.

May be an illustration of text that says '2 世 ഗDD The BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TRATION MOVES to ALLOW ANSGENDERS to COMPETEM GIRLS' SPORTS... U.S.S.R. &EASTERN BLOC WOMEN'S OLYMPIC SCANDALS Sports MUSEUM YOU SEE YURI, WE DIDN'T CHEAT. WE WERE JUST AHEAD of OUR TIME. NITINOM 23D aIvINN @Ramireztoons michaelpramirez.com'

RogerG

Read more here:

* California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson’s AB 957 can be accessed at https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB957/id/2698894/California-2023-AB957-Introduced.html

* California’s SB 107 is described at “Newsom signs bill to make California a refuge for transgender youth and families”, Brooke Migdon, The Hill: Changing America, 9/30/22, at https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3668922-newsom-signs-bill-to-make-california-a-refuge-for-transgender-youth-and-families/. The bill can be read at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB107.

* An examination of gender dysphoric suicide can be read at “Does ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ For Trans Kids Actually Prevent Suicide? Here’s What The Data Say”, Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., Heritage Foundation, 6/15/2022, https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/does-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids-actually-prevent-suicide-heres-what-the

* Scott Wilk’s comment on the danger that California poses for the state’s children can be found at “State Senator Warns About New Gender-Affirmation Law: ‘If You Love Your Children, You Need To Flee California’”, Real Clear Politics, 6/15/23, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/06/15/california_state_senator_warns_if_you_love_your_children_you_need_to_flee_california.html

* The story on Keira Bell and the UK’s Tavistock gender identity clinic:
• “Tavistock transgender clinic could face mass legal action ‘from 1,000 families of children who claim they were rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers’ weeks after NHS shut it down in wake of damning report”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 8/11/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11101661/Tavistock-transgender-clinic-facing-mass-legal-action-1-000-families.html
• “UK court rules against trans clinic over treatment for children”, Rachel Savage, et al, Reuters, 11/20/2020, at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-lgbt-transgender-trfn-idUSKBN28B3AV
• “NHS gender clinic ‘should have challenged me [Keira Bell] more’ over transition”, Alison Holt, BBC News, 3/1/2020, at https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51676020
• “Shuttering the Tavistock”, Bernard Lane, Quillette, 8/5/2022, at https://quillette.com/2022/08/05/closing-the-tavistock-is-an-important-step/
• “Courage of the parents, patients and whistleblowers who refused to be silenced is revealed as controversial Tavistock children’s transgender clinic is to SHUT after damning report warned it was ‘not safe’”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 7/29/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11059641/Courage-parents-patients-whistleblowers-revealed-Tavistock-childrens-clinic-SHUT.html

* National Review has been forthright is presenting counter-arguments to the ones advanced by transgender activists:
• “California Is Losing Its Mind”, the editors, 6/14/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/california-is-losing-its-mind/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second
• “The World Is Turning against Gender Experiments on Children”, the editors, 6/13/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/the-world-is-turning-against-gender-experiments-on-children/
• “The U.S. Is an Outlier in ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors”, Madeleine Kearns, National Review Magazine, 5/25/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/06/12/the-u-s-is-an-outlier-in-gender-affirming-care-for-minors/

* The Dutch are beginning to recognize caution in regards to “gender-affirming care”: “The Dutch Model is falling apart”, Rose Kelleher, Genspect, 1/2/23, at https://genspect.org/the-dutch-model-is-falling-apart/#:~:text=The%20decision%20of%20the%20well-respected%20Dutch%20newspaper%20NRC,and%20impairs%20their%20future%20ability%20to%20have%20children.
• The Dutch rethink about GAC began with a report in the Dutch newspaper NRC: “Trans Care Must Also Meet Medical-Scientific Standards”, Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman, NRC, 12/30/22, at https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/12/30/ook-transzorg-moet-aan-medisch-wetenschappelijke-standaarden-voldoen-a4152945

* A review of the issue of detransition, though generally supportive of transgender treatments but acknowledging the persistent presence of large numbers of people who regret their “transition”, can be read here: “Take Detransitioners Seriously”, Daniela Valdes and Kinnon McKinnon, The Atlantic, 1/18/23, at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/detransition-transgender-nonbinary-gender-affirming-care/672745/

* Lisa Littman’s groundbreaking report on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read at “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria”, Lisa Littman, PLOS ONE, 8/16/2018, at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330

* More on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read in “Study of 1,655 Cases Supports the ‘Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Hypothesis”, Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), 3/30/23, at https://segm.org/study-of-1655-cases-lends-support-to-ROGD

June 17, 2023June 28, 2023

Debunking “2,000 Mules”

May be an image of 1 person and text

* Please read John McCormack’s rebuttal to “2,000 Mules” at https://www.nationalreview.com/…/06/12/sorry-trump-lost/

I have been asked to watch Dinesh D’Souza’s “2,000 Mules” by people who believe it to be gospel on the November 2020 election. I didn’t because spending the money elsewhere mattered more to me. Heaven knows, I got the gist from a host of Trump-friendly publications and websites without the added expense. Being a man on the right, access is no problem. After reading about many of the same sources referenced by D’Souza in the film, D’Souza’s argument ranks up there with anything written by the author Dan Brown (“Angels & Demons”, “The Da Vinci Code”, and “Inferno”, etc.). The only difference between the two D’s is that Brown acknowledges his work to be fiction.

There is a debate here that needs to be aired. Trump, the leading contender for the Republican 2024 crown, is running on … what for it … November 2020. His contention that the election was stolen is the centerpiece of his campaign, along with the long trail of verbal abuse directed at anyone he doesn’t like, normally people who haven’t shown sufficient obeisance. He made it the focus of his return to the center stage, so it deserves a careful examination. John McCormack gives one of the best and most concise critiques of the Trump claims that I’ve come across.

First, from the get-go, the notion that a massive, sprawling plot mostly across five states, maybe more, involving hundreds of thousands of fellow conspirators with none of this huge crowd being detected or slipping up boggles the mind. That alone, without seeing the film, should cause a person to be very leery. There are millions of spine-tingling stories across the internet of mysterious dark forces bringing down the world. How is this one any different? They, like all tall tales of expansive conspiracies, have to maintain an inhuman level of operational secrecy. The absence of at least a few dufuses to spill the beans among the hundreds of thousands of participants (voters, couriers, organizers) simply can’t pass the smell test.

Here’s one rule for rationally assessing conspiracy claims: believability is in inverse proportion to the number of participants.

The “mules” in the film are the 54,000 couriers (not 2,000) who allegedly stuffed ballot boxes in key locations. None has been fingered by Trump’s army of independent bounty hunters, nor law enforcement, to prove the existence of the plot. Nor will the producers and publisher divulge the names of the left’s NGO’s who are supposedly at the center of the scheme. Dominion’s $787 million lawsuit award hangs over the producers and publishers who might be inclined to name some. Apparently, millions of dollars for over-priced attorneys and the need to bribe some in the jury pool is a bit too daunting to run the risk.

The database for the story consists of cellphone pings and security camera footage on adjacent buildings. I’m reminded of the techie acronym gigo: garbage data goes in, garbage comes out. Data doesn’t stand alone; it is massaged by prior assumptions. So, if you go into the issue assuming something is fishy, don’t be surprised that in your imagination a fish pops out. But it’s not a fish; it’s the lingering smell in your nostrils from cleaning the garbage cans the day before. The pings could be delivery and Uber drivers and the surveilled clutches of ballots at drop boxes turn out to be a family member legally depositing ballots for the family.

Not that fraud doesn’t happen. Of course, it does. It occurs in every election, and is made easier by ballot harvesting, no voter ID, and shot gunning ballots through the mail turning election day into election season. But it doesn’t happen like this. When you have elections like this, elections begin to lose respect and you end up fanning the imaginations of the already unhinged. That’s the real lesson of 2020.

Let’s go back to election day being . . . election day, and 70% of the ballots cast in-person. Add voter ID and we might have more people accepting the results. We don’t need to follow a self-serving narcissist into another electoral defeat. The GOP’s self-preservation should trump Trump.

May be an illustration of 1 person and text

RogerG

June 14, 2023June 18, 2023

The Trump Indictment, Part II: King Oedipus Meets Dr. Faustus

The Shitty Christian Blog: [OE008] The Story: Oedipus — Oedipus, King of Thebes

Donald Trump dismisses fears his massive indoor Nevada rally could spread coroanvirus | Daily ... — MAGA/Trump supporters, 2023

Doctor Faustus is back...and this time it’s personal | The Exeter Daily — Dr. Faustus selling his soul to the devil

In 2015, I had this sinking feeling that once Trump sunk his tentacles into the GOP, he’d be hard to cleanse from the party’s bloodstream.

He is a tabloid personality with a harsh mouth and revels in political theatrics. Republicans, as it turned out, were in a mood for a drama queen in 2016, and many still are. They wanted somebody to “own the libs”. Trump first gave them drama about Obama’s birth certificate and followed it with a litany of juvenile banter in “crooked Hillary” (honestly, she may be), “slow/low energy/clueless/not a man” Jeb, “I’ve never seen a human being [John Kasich] eat in such a disgusting fashion”, and now he’s progressed all the way to “coward/weak/lazy/low life/gutless pig” Bill Barr. And to think that there are people who still defend this man and his behavior to this day. According to recent polls, he’s the overwhelming choice to be the Republican nominee. Disgusting. It’s enough for a rock-ribbed Republican such as myself to rethink my party registration. Is this what it means to be a Republican?

He’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed.

The latest Trump dust up is his federal indictment under:
• 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” (31 counts)
• 18 USC §1512, “Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant” (3 counts)
• 18 U.S. Code § 1519, “Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy” (1 count)
• 18 USC § 1001, “Statements or entries generally” (concerns false statements, coverups, etc.) (3 counts)

The first 31 counts draw from Section 793 of the US Code which relates to parts of the old Espionage Act. If you look at the kinds of documents that were bouncing around at his Mar-a-Lago estate and elsewhere – intelligence briefings, contingent US military plans, foreign and domestic military assessments, etc. – this is much more than diary entries, gifts from one head of state to another, personal letters, etc. The highly sensitive nature of the documents demands a different treatment in law. That’s one of the reasons for Section 793 and not the Public Records Act.

The other 7 counts, if true, are evidence of Trump’s pure hubris. I suppose that if you’ve dodged so many bullets, you might come to think of yourself as immune. It’s as if he thinks that he is wearing an invisible Lakota Sioux ghost shirt which makes him invulnerable to the bullets from DC’s henchmen. Like other forms of magic, it works till it doesn’t (the one surviving ghost shirt from the 1890’s has dried blood around holes in it). In this case, there is an evidentiary basis in the indictment for obstruction of justice. They’ve got Trump on tape discussing attempts to mislead investigators and hide the documents, suborning others to commit perjury. Then there’s the corroborative testimony of people in Trump’s inner circle. Granted, the prosecution’s evidence will have to withstand cross examination and counter arguments by Trump’s legal eagles, but if the evidence is valid, it should raise more than a few eyebrows, with the possible exception of the most committed diehards.

Most troubling is the reaction of the media on the right. The commentary can be summed up in “double standard, double standard, double standard”. Very little of it focuses on the contents of the indictment. Some of it is silly in the extreme. Hugh Hewitt, a radio host that I respect for his generally calm and reasoned demeanor on air, expressed his disappointment that a rumored selling by Trump of classified information to the Saudis didn’t materialize in the indictment. His reaction after reading it: “Is that all there is?” Upon hearing that, I said, “What!?” Is the fact that the indictment failed to live up to the wildest speculation on MSNBC or the ladies on The View a real argument against it? Hewitt, you’ve got to be kidding.

He was dismissive of the first 31 counts, the claimed Espionage Act violations, ostensibly because of the unprosecuted transgressions by Biden, Pence, Hillary, and Clinton proteges like Sandy Berger – the double standard argument morphed into an excuse for the mindlessly casual treatment of highly sensitive national security papers. In effect, may as well shred this part of the US Code. This Hewitt response was without seeing the exact nature of the documents, which will come out in court. The prosecutors know this; Trump knows it; the legal eagles know it. If it turns out that all they’ve got is love letters between Trump and “rocket man”, or some such, the DOJ will be wiping egg from its face and providing one more reason to defenestrate the FBI and defang the Garland gang. If these documents prove to be extremely sensitive, the raw egg will be dripping down the face and all over the casual attire of a good portion of the right’s punditry class.

One of those in need of a washcloth will be Mollie Hemingway, a noted commentator in the conservative, pro-Trump firmament. Today (6/13/23), on Hewitt’s show, she ostentatiously proclaimed in hyperbolic bombast, “For me to take this [the fed’s Trump indictment] seriously . . . I need to see hundreds of Russia-collusion-hoax people in jail.” Ruminate on that rant for a moment. Until we retroactively correct for all those who got away, we cannot enforce the law. It’s ludicrous. She’s making the case to selectively not enforce the law à la Alvin Bragg or any of the other Soros-backed DA’s who have been recently inflicted on us. She does this while also admitting that the case against Trump in the indictment is troubling. Is she an advocate of ignoring the evidence till enough Democrat scalps are tied to her lance? Where does this line of illogic stop, at the point where the US Code is effectively eviscerated? Ignore the evidence against Trump till we get Hillary in chains?

If the highly classified nature of the documents proves genuine, while honestly not a fan of Karl Marx, his famous dictum will apply to this current crop of the right’s commentariat: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

The second batch of charges – those involving obstruction (of justice) – at least causes a pregnant pause for some of Trump’s past stalwart defenders. The guest lineup on Fox News was left with stumbling admissions of Trump in serious trouble. That’s when they were forced to elevate their assessment beyond their “double standard” shibboleth and into the details of the indictment. All the talk about “double standard” will ring hollow if in court the highly classified nature of the documents is born out and evidence of Trump’s perfidy and irresponsibility is shown to be valid.

The main problem for the media on the right is that they have manufactured a pickle for themselves. They have not cultivated a conservative audience but instead nurtured a Trump one. The creation of a base reliant on such an unstable personality is asking for trouble. This media runs the risk of alienating this base if they are forced to deal honestly with the facts. That audience is likely to be siloed in their own echo chamber and not appreciative of the exposure of their demigod emperor as not wearing any clothes. For most people, including Trump, nudity will not enhance their appearance.

The media on the right, right now, acts as if they are sitting on pins and needles. They reach for the thin reeds of silly arguments. They fail to come to grips with their central problem: they hitched their wagon to a wild horse. Or more accurately, they made a bargain with the devil. So, Trump is a reincarnation of Sophocles’ Oedipus, King of Thebes (see “Oedipus Rex”), experiencing the wages of his pure hubris, and the Trump base is impersonating Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, selling one’s soul for instant gratification.

May be an illustration of 1 person and text

RogerG

Read more here:

* Jack Smith’s indictment can be found at https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0A-iRN3cPhLLJJwVT7jbt8WOR6ymkohVTX0v7r634xtVjR5SeHV7SeMp0

June 10, 2023June 11, 2023

Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy, Like Oedipus, the King of Thebes

A photo published by the U.S. Justice Department showing boxes of documents stored in a storage room at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2021. (U.S. Justice Department/Handout via Reuters) — A photo published by the U.S. Justice Department showing boxes of documents stored in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2021. (U.S. Justice Department/Handout via Reuters)

Well, it’s done. Trump is officially indicted by federal prosecutors. Yes, again, but this one may stick. One thing has always been true about Trump: he’s reckless in his language and behavior. He’s so provocative that his opponents want nothing more than to bury him. They tried in bogus impeachments and the outrageous Bragg indictment. But the Jack Smith indictment may be something different. Sometimes braggarts have the mental capacity to be stupid. If you read the indictment, if proven in court before a jury, Trump is not only mulishly stupid but quite possibly criminally so.

Read the indictment for yourself. Here it is: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf

I should have been more reserved in condemning the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on August 8, 2022. I was furious at what seemed to me to be just another DC hit job on Trump. Regardless, they discovered a treasure trove of classified documents that covered military plans, capabilities, military assessments of our friends and foes, etc., and rashly shared by Trump with friends and apologists like Kid Rock.

If established in court, the double-standard defense quickly loses its force. The acts are so egregious. Anyway, since Hillary, Comey, and Biden avoided prosecution, it is no defense for Trump. It’s an argument to throw the book at Hillary, Comey, Biden . . . and Trump. Constantly, our criminal justice system is wracked with a few convictions in a sea of non-prosecutions and acquittals of nearly identical circumstances. At a certain point, in flagrant situations, the law must be enforced. It’s too bad, though, that the feds, who have soiled themselves so blatantly in the recent past, are now tasked to bring Trump to the bar of justice.

I can understand the skepticism on the right. But we are now duly warned about putting our faith in a man who has the awful habit of being his own worst enemy. Maybe he actually believed his own rhetoric: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

The ancient Greeks called it hubris which led to nemesis and on to personal destruction. The Trump saga reads like Sophocles’ tragedy, “Oedipus Rex”. Go ahead, go online and read a few synopses of the play. Trump is Oedipus, King of Thebes.

Donald Trump indictment latest: Former US president 'told aide to hide ...

Oedipus the King | Book by Sophocles | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster

RogerG

June 8, 2023June 11, 2023

Hooray for Chris Christie; Vivek Ramaswamy, Not So Much

Chris Christie Goes After Ivanka and Jared Kushner

* Please watch the entirety of Chris Christie’s presidential announcement below. It’s a hoot. It shows a guy with the capacity to talk extemporaneously, with good sense, and without the juvenile rhetoric of the man from Mar-a-Lago.

**************

Today’s pundits frequently refer to America’s political scene as one composed of tribes. Actually, “cults” is more accurate. We have the woke cult (neo-Marxism), a gender fluidity cult, climate cult, the Gaia cult, etc. Well, for some on the right, let’s add the Trump and nonsense cults. Frequently, those two overlap.

So, what is a cult? Words such as “excessive admiration”, “a fashionable person or thing among a particular group”, “veneration or devotion for a particular figure or object” stand out in the dictionaries. Putting it together, it’s a siloed group of people who are transfixed by a person or idea and revel in confirmation bias (seek only information that supports their biases).

Regarding Chris Christie, he has stepped forward to call out the cult in the midst of the Republican base – the cult of the orange man. Prior to him, all Republicans in the Republican presidential derby, and before, pranced around like they were walking on egg shells, afraid to upset the delicate sensibilities of Trump’s rabid followers. Quite frankly, it’s about time the cult was challenged. Thanks to his fortitude, Christie jumped to near the top of my score card.

And Vivek Ramaswamy leaped to the bottom. There is a crazy element in the right’s “populist” base – another aspect of the orange man’s cult – that believes our fiscal problems are driven by excessive spending on . . . foreign aid. Not only that, they think that appeasing aggressors leads to peace. Hmmmm, where have we heard that before? No “Si vis pacem, para bellum” of the Roman general Vegetius for this panderer to the mob – er, cult. If you’re interested, it means, “If you want peace, prepare for war”.

WATCH: Vivek Ramaswamy On Why Left And Right Should Fight Woke Capital - Big League Politics — Vivek Ramaswamy

No sure path to appeasement can be imagined than knee-capping the victim by ending their access to U.S. foreign aid. Foreign aid, though, represents less than 1% of our federal budget ($39 billion). That’s 1.7% of our two biggest drivers of the federal budget – Social Security and Medicare – at $2.2 trillion annually. We are not even talking about peanuts. More accurately, we are talking about a particle of a peanut that unhappily fell under the track of an Abrams tank. So, Vivek will lead the charge against the smallest budgetary particle of a particle going to Ukraine on his way to bootlicking a thug, Putin. He’ll have to share the other boot with Trump.

As Christie says of Trump, the man of Mar-a-Largo would quickly end the Ukraine War by giving Ukraine to Russia. And Vivek would be cheerleading the entire way. This duopoly of demagoguery is an insult to rationality. Get this: show your spine to the CCP by showing how quickly you cave to a thug, an ally of the Beijing thug. And this on the heels of the Afghanistan bugout. Abandonment and surrender are a show of strength? How does that work? Chairman Xi must be shaking in his boots, the same boots that Xi shares with Putin, the same ones dripping in Vivek/Trump spittle.

Hooray for Christie bringing all this lunacy to light. I hope that he keeps it up. He’ll steal the stage from a man whose sole theatrical tact is to bully. As for Vivek, fresh from the taste of leather in his mouth, Christie in comparison shows himself to be the adult in the room.

RogerG

Read more here:

* Vivek Ramaswamy’s appeasement policy: “Vivek Ramaswamy willing to give ‘major concessions to Russia’ to end Ukraine war”, Ryan King, Washington Examiner, 6/4/23, at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/vivek-ramaswamy-give-concessions-russia-ukraine

June 5, 2023June 11, 2023

Greenie Energy’s Bilateral Orchiectomy of Our Civilization: The Censored Other Side in the Debate

* bilateral orchiectomy: noun; surgical castration

* Please watch the discussion below sponsored by the Institute of Public Affairs (Australia). The 43 minutes are an introduction to the other side in the greenie energy debate.

***************

Are we engaging in a civilization-wide bilateral orchiectomy? At this point in time, it certainly seems so. What I call a civilization-wide castration is actually our attempt to no longer be productive. It’s practically a reversion to the Stone Age. How? We are gutting our ability to maintain our standard of living by first destroying the energy that powers it and by secondly convincing us that it’s the right thing to do. In true totalitarian fashion, robust debate on the subject is killed so only one message – the approved one – gets through by open indoctrination in the schools and the censoring of alternative viewpoints. It’s one part a Soviet school system and second part Inquisition. The result is misery.

The heavy-handed censorship blankets many topics, everything from racial disparities to climate change to transgender ideology. There’s only one approved opinion on these issues so that view must no longer be treated as opinion but as fact. Take the fate of the UK’s Maya Forstater, an accomplished tax consultant and women’s rights activist. She fell afoul of the thought police by saying sex is “real, important, immutable, and not to be conflated with gender identity.” Out of the woodwork emerged the chronically over-sensitive who claimed they were “harmed”. She was dismissed by her employer, the think tank Center for Global Development.

She didn’t blithely accept the punishment but sued. The initial tribunal ruled against her when it announced that her views were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society.” A High Court judge later reversed the decision on appeal. She was given a reprieve, but that didn’t end thought control throughout the western world. “Not worthy of respect” is imposed everywhere.

The groundwork for censorship was laid in the K-grad schools. Kids have been imbued with the theology of the green cult from age 5, if not before on Sesame Street. Apocalyptic climate change is said to be happening, fossil fuels are the principal perpetrator, and “renewables” and “sustainable” enter the lexicon in the form of forests of windmills and expanses of solar panels. No logic, empiricism, or questioning is taught or expected of the pupils, or exposure to another point of view.

I am a retired teacher but still remember the State of California mandating recycling initiatives on the part of every school district in the early 2000’s. As part of it, my high school established an environment student club which, among other things, peddled paper and plastic recycling boxes to every classroom. Most teachers complied, I didn’t. Why? I asked of the students to give me logically and empirically valid reasons for doing it. They responded with the usual litany but when challenged couldn’t take the conversation beyond the rudimentary talking points. I actually used them as guinea pigs in front of my class to illustrate a functioning example of logic and empiricism. I simply asked them to prove it. They couldn’t. Adult others in the movement could probably make the case, but the kids merely expressed propaganda but showed no inkling of being able to practice logic or empiricism, both deductive and inductive reasoning.

This is what we are producing: kids without functioning brains. And kids without functioning brains turn into adults without . . . . The scientific method can’t function without a healthy skepticism. Robust debate can’t either. The mental stultification is happening on the climate change front to the detriment of our long-term prospects.

The whole subject is discussed in an atmosphere purposefully starved of another point of view. If fossil fuels are so bad, what’s the alternative? Windmills and solar panels? Hydrogen, the tides? Any gambit is trumpeted for a while, till the reality sinks in. Right now, wind and solar is the latest faddish panacea. But what happens when the wind stops and the sun is on the other side of the planet or hidden by a blanket of clouds? Simple question, but nothing but crickets. Unstated to the kiddies is the backup maintenance of steamed-up fossil fuel and nuclear plants, or the long anticipated second coming of batteries. Have these evangelists of apocalyptic climate change ever conjured the mental picture of the reality of huge forests of windmills, seas of solar panels, and the massive warehouses of batteries dotting the countryside like so many Amazon distribution centers? Mind you, the massive battery collectives don’t exist, and the financial and environmental costs of trying to make them is monumentally prohibitive. It’s a scandal.

Thomas Sowell was famous for saying, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” What are the trade-offs for the humongous pursuit of “renewables” and the eradication of fossil fuels? Why, of course, it’s prosperity! Greenie energy is unworkable and hugely expensive. At the end of the day, the trade-off is an increase in the number of people below the poverty line.

Go figure. We’re educating and unthinkingly clawing our way back to the early 19th century.

RogerG

Read more here:

* The travails of Maya Forstater is recounted in “Cancel Culture Harms Us All”, Madeleine Kearns, National Review, 4/24/22, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/cancel-culture-harms-us-all/

June 4, 2023June 11, 2023

A “Very Expensive Exercise in Futility”, Morris Chang, CEO of TSMC

Mr. Chang’s comment in the title came a mere matter of months after a much-ballyhooed opening of a new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) facility in Phoenix, Arizona, a heavily subsidized joint effort with the state of Arizona and the federal government’s CHIPS Act. President Biden gushed during the opening ceremonies that manufacturing in the U.S. “is back, folks.” However, Mr. Chang had a hard look at the financials and concluded that the Arizona plant was a loser and the CHIPS Act ($52 billion in chip subsidies) was a “very expensive exercise in futility.” TSMC is scaling back operations at the new plant.

No photo description available. — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is building its first fabrication plant in North Phoenix. (TSMC)

Why the harsh assessment? The “folks” at TSMC came to realize that business activity in America is a much more expensive proposition than they had earlier contemplated. We are simply uncompetitive and the freebies – free infrastructure, other giveaways, tax goodies, etc. – can’t make up for the cultural, social, political, and economic deficits. The Rust Belt, California’s economic decrepitude, and the other blue states’ dismal economic futures are not magical, accidental happenstances. They are a byproduct of America’s current – and past – infatuation with government intervention for an ever-expanding list of excuses.

The Democratic Party is the institutional gatekeeper of this our bumbling central planning, with some Republicans tagging along in the hope of sharing in the reflected glory of a big and splashy event. But for the donkey party, they see themselves as the keeper of the lodestar – a sort of Ark of the Covenant – of their vision, and it is none other than the New Deal. It’s a forever template to be repeated endlessly. Of course, one must ignore the fact that it was a disaster. The depression became a Great Depression which persisted for a decade, was interrupted by the emergency of World War II, and was set to resume if subsequent Republican Congresses in the late 1940’s hadn’t interceded to quash much of the madness

CWA workers — Men pushing wheel barrows in Civil Works Administration project in the 1930’s.

The Great Depression Facts: Double Dip Economic Slump :: The Market Oracle — In spite of the tremendous federal government interventions, unemployment remained high throughout the 1930’s. One can conclude that FDR’s New Deal was a massive failure, hugely ineffectual, or helped to prolong the Depression. Whichever, it was a disaster.

Whenever the donkey party ascends the grimy pole of power, their favorite ploy is to imitate FDR. So, concerns of declining domestic manufacturing – which, if true, was a result of government interventions – is to be addressed by . . . more government intervention. Thus, the CHIPS Act is just another exercise in flooding the zone with taxpayer moneys like in the heady days of FDR’s meddling.

True, today, Trump and his cadre of “populist” Republicans also love the idea of slathering gobs of the public treasury on favorite obsessions such as manufacturing and employing the stick of government intervention in tariffs to protect their golden boy. They don’t have the smarts to understand that it’s central planning by another name. Call it “industrial policy”. It’s a rebranded New Deal for a new era of demagogues and nitwits.

Why did this latest effort at what doesn’t work fail? Mr. Chang belatedly noticed that he entered the snake pit that is America. The Rust Belt of the Upper Midwest became a rusty belt of abandoned factories, expanding slums, chronic unemployment, and a declining tax base because of the unrestrained greed of government-empowered labor unions, onerous taxation, and the country’s ascent to the zenith of reregulating its economy. Much of what made the Rust Belt rusty remains, and gets a boost whenever the donkey party is granted the keys to the kingdom.

Think about all the ways that America is an economic snake pit. Ever since FDR’s New Deal lavishly spent and bullied farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs for a decade, Democrats have assiduously worked to revive the monster. The 1970’s rise of environmentalism replaced the 1930’s corporatism and socialism as the go-to excuse to bring back the Leviathan. Out came the well-intentioned Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and their subsequent amendments, and herd of agencies and regulations.

California has a housing crisis for the same reason that Mr. Chang has a gloomy attitude about chip manufacturing in Arizona, or any other place in America. Permitting and the host of other approvals easily doubles the cost of plant construction as compared to Taiwan. Additionally, labor costs are through the roof: triple, maybe four times the cost of Taiwanese workers when you factor in all the mandated benefits alongside the higher wages and salaries. Don’t expect these numbers to remain the same for long if local lefties discover America’s proven appetite for hiking the minimum wage. The jump in wages for fast food workers ripples through the economy all the way to the plant floor.

The quality of what economists call human capital is another troubling factor. Chief among the attributes of human capital is a robust work ethic, which includes timely, quick responses to problems at work. Shang-yi Chiang, TSMC’s head of research and development, was quoted as saying, “people worked so much harder in Taiwan.” He cites the example of an equipment failure at 1 a.m. being immediately repaired by 2 a.m. in Taiwan. In America, the plant has to wait till 10 a.m. He concludes about the island’s workforce, “They [workers] do not complain, and their spouse does not complain either.”

county union (SEIU 1021) workers strike — SEIU picketers chant while sitting and marching during the county union workers (SEIU 1021) strike held at the Solano County Governement Center plaza, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015, in Fairfield. (Steve Reczkowski/Daliy Republic)

Of course, panderers at Fox News or MSNBC, and “populists” everywhere, would counter with something about Americans not being wage slaves, or similar rhetoric. But they ignore the time when Taiwan’s Horatio Algierses were actually Americans of the 19th century. A cursory biographical reading of the lives of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford, etc., reads like Chaing’s depiction of the average Taiwanese employee. Did we lose our va-va-voom in an avalanche of modern self-satisfaction, self-esteem, and victimhood indoctrination?

Indeed, indoctrination is the watchword in describing much of American public education today. As for teaching math, science, reading, history, literature, and civics, the academic core, NAEP scores have stagnated at embarrassing levels if not fallen. Proficiency in U.S. History and Civics by eighth-graders currently hovers around 14% and 22% respectively. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows a significant step down from Taiwan to the U.S. in academic performance in math and science.

May be an image of 1 person and text

The differential would probably be much worse if the U.S. hadn’t experienced a large influx of Asians over the past few decades who are still somewhat immune from our pop-cultural depredations. They dominate enrollments in elite high schools and college programs in math and science to such an extent that Big Academia practices covert reverse discrimination against them, treating them as “white” in this new era of blatant DEI racial favoritism.

Yes, friendly foreign investors face a snake pit of an ill-prepared labor pool, one with a declining appreciation for hard work, and an economic environment plagued by a host of collectivist busy bodies who are heavily bankrolled by the hyper-wealthy possessing the means to insulate themselves from the insipid consequences of their lofty ideals. Analogies work best in describing this state of affairs. A snake pit is an accurate depiction of the economic ecosystem but flies-to-cow-paddies or maybe piranhas-in-a-feeding-frenzy is a much better fit for our government interventions of regulation and subsidies. American government brings to the table its retinue of rent seekers and socialistic/neo-Marxist partisans to muck up the works. Throw out the money and regulatory power and like flies or piranha this brood shows up to feed on the carcass. Apparently, TSMC doesn’t relish being viewed as cold meat on the side of the road.

Welcoming TSMC with the CHIPS Act, our government hid the regulatory “guardrails” (Biden’s word) that turned the well-intentioned into a feeding frenzy. The law to replant chip manufacturing in the U.S. was saddled with mandates for favored demographics, our adversarial labor unions, greenie canards, and DEI and ESG and all the other acronyms of the hard left’s political project. As in “Arbeit Macht Frei” over the gates of Auschwitz, the “CHIPS Act Notice of Funding Opportunity” welcomes recipients of this government largesse. This gamut of insidiousness in the “Notice” was the translation of the Act’s language by the Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology into an expensive regulatory morass.

Since analogies work best, quicksand is more accurate than “revitalization”. “Revitalization” means to make healthy again, but health isn’t the actual goal. The CHIPS Act was just another vehicle to advance a political and cultural revolution. And these revolutions are expensive, and two centuries of experience shows them to be descents into a life of, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Beware of our government’s handouts. Our dole didn’t benefit the poor – if their neighborhoods are any indication – and they won’t benefit anyone operating with a bottom line.

POLITICO MAFIOSO: Cartoon of the Day:What Solyndra Scandal?

RogerG

Read more here:

* For a account of the New Deal, go to the following: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes, Harper, 2008. The “forgotten man” in the title is a reference to the average worker, taxpayer, and businessman, not to the Left’s litany of the “oppressed”.

* The situation involving TSMC’s Arizona chips plant is appraised in “Why the CHIPS Act Will Fail”, Jordan McGillis (Manhattan Institute) and Clay Robinson (Arizona State graduate student), National Review, 5/11/23, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/05/29/why-the-chips-act-will-fail/

* For American student academic performance turn to “US eighth-grade history, civics scores fall to 1990s levels”, NewsNation, 5/3/2023; “Reading and mathematics scores decline during COVID-19 pandemic”, NAEP, National Center for Education Statistics, 2022, at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2022/

* “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology”, Chris Miller, Scribner, 2022.

June 2, 2023June 2, 2023

Papering Over Insanity: The Green Energy Charade, Cap-and-Trade, and the Assault on Trucking

esla unveils its new electric semi truck at a presentation in Hawthorne, Calif., in 2017. (Alexandria Sage/Reuters)

I begin with a tripartite revolution, of which the charade is a manifestation.

The sudden onset of a cultural and political revolution is bedeviling us. It’s a three-legged revolution. One leg is the “woke” revolution with its reverse pogrom against the vast majority of the population and the entire civilization itself. Think of it as the reverse of the sanctioned riots – pogroms – against Jews, a small minority in imperial Russia. Currently, a resurrected cadre of Red Guards (of Maoist infamy), defames, and defaces our cherished institutions, beliefs, customs, and commemorations, and are on the hunt to eradicate a mystical and vague “privilege” of “whiteness” or the “rich” or whoever they wish to pillory as their enemy. The parallel with Mao’s carnage is stunning.

That’s not all. With the assault of the “woke” comes the second leg: an intensified zealotry for the battle against “climate change” and a newfound veneration of the pagan goddess Gaia. A suddenly intense and fanatical war on man-made carbon is the tip of the spear of the revolution. States like California are leading the way into what will probably result in a decline much like the descent into Medieval times. One of the chief vehicles to undermine our quality of life is the loosely-defined “green energy”, and that means a love affair with “renewables” and electric everything. In the end, it can only produce a broad, sustained misery.

The third leg is the erection of a monster state to make it happen, for without it, the dreams of utopia will not be realized. This turns the struggle into a war against human nature, the existence of which they have brushed aside in congeries of rhetoric in order to reimagine people as fully malleable to their designs. It’s a calamity at the end of the day. Think of it as a full-court, state-sponsored destruction of prosperity.

The vocabulary of “sustainable” or “renewable” is a chimera and an evisceration of our quality of life. Solar, wind, geothermal, and small hydro is the mantra but their enfeebled productivity is the reality. Lenin’s Bolsheviks toyed with the elimination of a financial system (money, banking, etc.), discovered that it only produced chaos, and settled on state-ownership of the economy. In the end, that system collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions. The same fate awaits this latest copy of dreams supplanting reality.

In Bolshevik Russia, a vast array of commissariats was found to be necessary to oversee the state-manipulation of ordinary life. Human beings don’t naturally behave in ways complimentary to the official utopian template. In California and other greenie states, and now the Biden federal government, similar government impositions are required to turn inherently deficient “renewables” into the energy backbone of a state and nation. A flim-flam is necessary to hide the truth, much like the paper-shuffling in the Soviet Gosplan (state economic planning agency). California has AB32 – the official, legally mandated set of commandments for greenie energy – CARB and an assisting regulatory labyrinth of support agencies. Biden has his EPA and the entire federal Leviathan to make the incoherent appear coherent.

Open letter of apology from UCSF Professor John Balmes, MD, to the Bayview Hunters Point ...

Communist Party of the Soviet Union — Soviet politburo under Gorbachev

How incoherent is the whole scheme in California? One need look no further than the spinoffs and unintended consequences of the greenie energy campaign. To paper over the scant production and the fact that “sustainables” can’t meet energy needs, certificates – Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s) and Environmental Attributes – are issued to solar, wind, and hydro producers in an elaborate carbon-credit scam who then peddle them, independent of their source, to purchase “dirty” power to make up for the abundant shortfalls. “Dirty” instantly becomes “green” with an REC or Energy Attribute pasted over it.

The energy deficits are real because renewables are chronically untimely and deficient in their production – solar spikes at around 3-4 pm and rapidly declines after, which doesn’t coincide with actual usage; wind only contributes when there’s wind; and hydro adds only when there’s sufficient stream flow. This certificated wallpaper is peddled by Investor Owner Utilities (IUO’s) – PG&E, Southern California Edison, etc. – and a new organizational Frankenstein called Community Choice Aggregators who are smaller energy collectives mostly composed of counties who virtue-signal their commitment to 100% pure renewables (Community Choice Energy), which isn’t, to their chagrin. In the end, after all the gamesmanship, just as much carbon is released into the air as before, just with more bureaucracy, middle men, and paperwork to turn the simple provision of energy into a more expensive shell game.

Got it? If not, you are not alone. Just remember one thing: all of us would benefit from the acknowledgment of a simple facet of the real world – trade-offs. More resources in time, resources, and capital spent on one thing means that they are not available for other things. Greenie energy is more costly in so many ways. How much have we unwittingly given up in new medical cures, inventions to make life easier and more productive, and greater prosperity as we spin our wheels in pursuit of a costly mirage? This is what declining civilizations do.

Royalty Free Woman Looking At A Maze Pictures, Images and Stock Photos - iStock

So, the effort to make crippled electricity everything gave us the PR stunt of Biden tooling around in a parking lot in an electric F150 and extolling its alleged virtues. It absolutely makes no sense. Without the internal combustion engine, the categories of utility vehicles and freight haulers (18-wheelers) would never have come into existence in the first place. Commerce and ranch work would revert back to the Middle Ages without it. Imagine the food supply more dependent on local production and the return of local famines as natural disasters periodically lay waste to the nearby food supply. The supermarket is inconceivable without the internal combustion engine.

The electric vehicle is a tony appurtenance for people who plan a life in a pampered urban cage, a life lacking in self-reliance and reveling in hedonistic indulgence. It’s a tailor-made booster of totalitarianism, whether of the soft or hard variety, since a cooped-up population is easier to control. It’s easier to make people greenie-compatible and keep them that way. Say goodbye to a real functioning citizen republic.

California, of course, is leading the way to this bleak future. The advances in fossil fuels and power efficiencies from better lubricants, tighter manufacturing tolerances, improved materials, fuel injection, solid-state ignition, and emission controls are now to be junked in an overnight leap into lithium batteries. It’s a disaster-in-waiting.

Think about all the “don’ts” you’ll have to anticipate. Don’t charge the ev overnight. It degrades the battery, without which, junk the $60,000 thing in a few years. Don’t buy one if you live in the routine path of hurricanes. Those batteries ignite if submerged in water. Don’t throw luggage into the trunk at the start of that long-anticipated road trip to Yellowstone. You might have to spend the night in the car waiting to be rescued – charging stations being quite sparse outside your urban cocoon. Don’t mindlessly grab that charging wand at some defaced public charging station. Think of the kilovolts passing through the wires just millimeters from your fingers. Insulation breaks down, especially when exposed to weather, vagrants, thousands of careless users jamming the things into their charging ports, and roving bands of teenage delinquents. The utility companies constantly warn us not to touch or go near downed power lines. What’s the difference? At least with gasoline, you’re safe so long as you don’t play with fire while filling up.

And then there’s the weight of the thing – the battery, that is. Weight matters a lot when getting from point A to point B, and when hauling anyone or anything. The family sedan has a thousand-pound one; the Ford F150, 1,500 pounds; the Hummer, 5,000, the weight of a light tank. The more weight, the less you can haul and the less distance you can haul it, making the trip through flyover country an anxiety-plagued, white-knuckled adventure as we are swallowed up in a geographical vacuum of charging stations.

14.5Kwh High Energy Electric Vehicle Battery Packs For Pick Up Truck — Batteries for an electric pickup

The asylum-by-the-coast called California is showing the world additional ways to muck things up. Along with shoe-horning soccer moms into ev’s, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state’s preeminent greenie commissariat, is doing the same thing to truckers. It has declared that all new drayage trucks (the ones used around ports) are to be emission-free by 2026. By 2035, all trucks must be. So, getting freight from ship to warehouse could turn into a real comedy skit. No practical alternative to diesel exists to do it.

Better yet, avoid California ports entirely – and while you’re at it, the entire west coast. Gulf Coast governors are waiting to welcome you in open arms. Trucking companies might very well be joining the middle class in fleeing California.

Have you seen the battery-powered 18-wheeler? Tesla has a prototype – MAN, Scalia, Triton, Freightliner, and Volvo too. But what are we giving up as we bow to the climate-change Inquisition? Answer: money (lots of it), reduced hauling capacity, the need for more trucks to make up for the smaller hauls, a vast increase in hauling time, the added expense of a specialized fleet of trucks impractical for anything but specialized use (drayage).

You’ll experience sticker shock at the price of that electric 18-wheeler. Try doubling the price of a new diesel one (around $185,000). A price jump of that nature will limit the number of companies financially capable of competing in a freight hauling market now artificially skewed to the big, big capitalized boys. An already distorted market will be further mangled beyond recognition.

Guess what? That battery powering the contraption makes an ev hauler about 5,400 lbs. heavier than the diesel version. Given the fact that the legal total weight of truck and freight can’t be over 80,000 lbs. without crumbling the roads and bridges, the load in the trailer must be smaller. More hauls, more trucks to do it, and jacked up prices for everything delivered by Amazon and to every brick-and-mortar store. Expect sparser offerings on the shelves and inflation at the register. Out the window goes Amazon Prime’s 3-day shipping and its current price tag.

Trucker collapses historic bridge, causing up to $1M damage - Bring Me The News

The whole concept of refueling takes on a new meaning. A diesel truck takes about 15 minutes; the battery-powered behemoth takes hours. The very people driving their trendy Nissan Leaf to Whole Foods will notice the attendant price increases and shortages. Given their pattern of partisan proclivities, the residents have voted to turn their world upside down. Last I checked, Manhattan, or inner-city anywhere, wasn’t famous as a verdant agricultural region or node of food packing and processing. Everything must be trucked into the hipster lair. I wonder how carefree is their lifestyle when scarcity turns from being more than theoretical background noise to real deprivation. Rents may become cheaper since people no longer want to live there, and all of it as a byproduct of hours-long refueling and trucks crippled in their carrying capacity.

Photo: Empty produce shelves at Whole Foods Market, Longmont, CO, March 13, 2020; Compass Natural — Empty produce shelves at Whole Foods Market, Longmont, CO, March 13, 2020

People adjust, and in ways not foreseen by CARB central planners. Their greenie ukases will push the population into crippled transportation and onto a crippled grid. California will have to generate 11.5 gigawatts of more electricity from sources that are already strained to the breaking point to meet the 2026 deadlines. Where’s that coming from? Not from inside the state. More limited and spasmodic energy from wind and solar won’t cut it. I suspect more of the paper flim-flam to disguise the reliance on “dirty” sources. It’s the truth that can’t admitted in polite company.

The state is already experiencing blackouts. Watch produce and other perishables rot as the state scrambles to reenergize the lines. That won’t be the end of it. The ultimate result is a descent by baby steps into a way of life that doesn’t work as well as our grandparents’. The green movement is a social suicide pact.

And to think that I haven’t even mentioned the monumental task of disposing of the batteries, spent solar panels (a lifespan of 10-15 years), and wind mills and their parts. Recycling only eats up more of the grid and consumes other scarce resources. All the toxic materials run the risk of seeping into our ground water. Think of it: we are making such humungous efforts to move our pollution from the air and into the ground, and our way of life will get hammered as never before. Our water supply might end up like the Salton Sea (Remember the MTBE scare? Look it up.). Whew, what a mess.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): “Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive.”

May be pop art of 1 person and text

RogerG

Read more here:

* For an account of California’s drayage truck mandates: “California’s latest environmental regulation may have unintended consequences for truckers”, Rachel Premack, FREIGHTWAVES, 5/25/2023, at https://www.freightwaves.com/news/californias-latest-trucking-emissions-regulation-may-have-unintended-consequences

* Thanks to Dominic Pino for his piece of 5/25/2023 in National Review Online, “Electric Trucks Are Worse than Diesel Trucks”, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/electric-trucks-are-worse-than-diesel-trucks/

* For an account of the new electric big rigs: “Semi-truck maker Freightliner has a test fleet of 40 rigs, with availability in 2022”, Mark Vaughn, Autoweek, 5/21/2021, at https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36506185/electric-big-rig-semi-trucks/

* More on the reduced hauling capacity of electric 18-wheelers: “Electrifying trucking will mean sacrificing critical weight for heavy batteries, eating into already-slim margins”, Bianca Giacobone, Business Insider, 2/2/2023, at https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-trucks-longhaul-batteries-tesla-heavy-cargo-weight-problem-2023-2

* Here’s a little synopsis of the MTBE scare: “MTBE controversy”, Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBE_controversy